


Notes From the Underground

by juurensha



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Fix-It, Flowey Redemption, Gen, Houseplant Flowey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 18:10:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9283844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juurensha/pseuds/juurensha
Summary: It’s quiet down in the Ruins now. Hours, days, and weeks pass, and he has already traveled the whole underground at least three times, before one day something new happens.A letter falls onto the bed of yellow flowers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I liked the idea of Flowey being carried around in a flower-pot, so I wanted to write a fic about how he got there from the end of the game. Hope you like it!

It’s quiet down in the Ruins now. 

He’s not sure how long it’s been since he’s been back to this form; it’s hard to tell the passage of the days down here without anyone else around. 

All he knows is that one day he looked down, and instead of hands and feet he once again had vines, and his dreams and memories seem to have lost something. 

He wishes he could save and reset, anything to break the humdrum greyness of these underground days, but his powers do not seem to have returned. Hours, days, and weeks pass, and he has already traveled the whole underground at least three times, before one day something new happens. 

A letter falls onto the bed of yellow flowers. 

FLOWEY,

THIS IS THE GREAT PAPYRUS. FRISK TOLD ME THAT YOU WERE STILL STUCK IN THE RUINS, AND EVEN THOUGH YOU TRICKED ME AND TRIED TO ABSORB EVERYONE’S SOULS, I THE GREAT PAPYRUS, HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS IS ALL BECAUSE YOU ARE LONELY AND LACK PUZZLES AND FRIENDS!

THEREFORE I SHALL BE SENDING YOU PUZZLES AND LETTERS, AND YOU SHALL KNOW THE JOYS OF PUZZLES AND FRIENDSHIP AND NO LONGER BE BORED! IT WILL BE WONDERFUL (EVEN IF YOU DO NOT HAVE ARMS, NEITHER DOES THE MONSTER KID AND THAT DOES NOT STOP THEM!)

PLEASE SEE THE WORDJUMBLE BELOW, IT IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES. I SHALL ALSO BE SENDING SOME HUMAN PUZZLES WHEN I HAVE DETERMINED THE BEST ONES THAT WILL SURVIVE THE FALL. SOON YOU SHALL FEEL BETTER!

PAPYRUS

The word jumble is stupid; he’s seen it before during one of the other timelines where Papyrus had started a Flowey fanclub. He balls it up and throws it into one of the dark corners and tells himself that he feels as close to satisfied as he can. 

Still, more letters tumble down along with brightly colored boxes of various puzzles and games that he assumes the human world has produced. He always expects them to be smashed when they hit the ground, but all the games are wrapped with enough bubble wrap to rival the games themselves. 

He generally throws the games against the wall just to see if he can break them, but one time the puzzle with the ships rebounded from the wall and nearly hit him in the head. 

He opens the packages and overturns the box and wrecks the pieces just out of principle. He doesn’t need yet another reminder that he is stuck down here in the dirt while everyone else walks above. 

(If when he gets bored he poked at the bubble-wrap, popping each useless air bubble, well, there’s no one else here anyway)

He crumples the letters and also throws them against the wall, but eventually he’ll pick one up to read. They’re inevitably far too enthusiastic, and he can nearly hear Papyrus’ voice bouncing off the walls, and sometimes (when the walls seem to be closing in around him and the dark seems almost solid) he remembers. 

He remembers, but without the emotions to give the memories context, everything feels like a faded picture. There’s Papyrus, smiling and waving and crumbling to dust. There’s Sans, dragon-skulls floating all around him and one glowing blue eye that stares unwaveringly at him. There’s Frisk, striped shirt and a blank face, but still doggedly fighting. 

(And even further back, although it’s hard to dreg them up, flashes of another child, in a shirt with two stripes, and there’s pie, and a warm hand—

Stop. 

He doesn’t want what he can’t have anymore)

Letters continue to fall down, and for some reason recipes begin to make their way into these missives. 

How stupid. They do remember he doesn’t need to eat, right?

But the days are long, and as time ticks by monotonously (marking time by the small spot of sky he can see from the bed of flowers where both Chara and Frisk fell), and there is nothing else to do, so he uncrumples a few of those recipes and scours the ruins for ingredients. Surprisingly, he does manage to unearth a few along with a dusty, familiar stove in a dusty, familiar house. 

(After a few tries, he’s pretty sure that’s not the way you make spaghetti.)

He keeps trying to make pie, but vines are sometimes a poor substitute for hands, and the crust always comes out lumpy with globs of butter, the butterscotch-cinnamon filling burnt, and it’s not like he can eat it anyway so he usually ends up throwing his attempts at the wall. 

More letters fall down, most detailing life in the human world. Undyne was working as a lifeguard on the beach, Alphys was happily toiling away in another lab, Mettaton had made a band, Papyrus was awesome, Sans was lazy, Frisk was at the school Toriel had started, and Asgore was gardening there—

He is so tired of this. 

More days and letters and packages fall away, and the walls loom over him as the small view of the sky seems to shrink. The clocks left behind in the ruins continue to tick and tock, and what use are recipes when he doesn’t eat, and what use are games when there is no one to play them with—

Enough.

He ransacks desks until he manages to scrounge up some paper and ink, and then he stares at the blank pages, willing the right words to come to him.

_Howdy,_

_It’s me, your good friend Flowey—_

No.

_Howdy,_

_I hope you’re happy that you left me down here—_

Yes, but no.

_I’m sorry._

**_No._ **

Somehow he manages to cobble together a letter, with all the ink-stained rejects balled up and shredded around him.

_Frisk,_

_Don’t you have something better to do?_

_-Flowey_

He grows his vines as tall as he can, creeping up the sides of the mountain until at last they peek over the hole, with the letter resting there. In the morning when he looks up, the letter isn’t there anymore. 

One day passes, then two, then three. 

He doesn’t feel anything, as always. He tells himself that he’s not even surprised. How can he ever be surprised? He has seen a thousand lifetimes, and he has known everything that would ever happen, and they know that now, so why would anyone ever come back for him?

Frisk was the one thing he could not predict, but even their compassion should have limits.

He contents himself with shredding paper and throwing paper balls around for a few days before he hears a scraping noise, and looks up to see dirt falling down as a rope is flung. 

_No. It can’t—_

But it is, as he sees a familiar tuft of brown hair, striped shirt, and blank expression peering down on him before grabbing the rope and clambering down. 

Frisk lands with a small puff of dirt, and he finally manages to ask, “Back again? Are you here to reset everything? Even I’m not that terrible.”

(Surely not, but—

He above all people would know how completely _boring_ life can get. And Frisk is good, but hasn’t he always doubted it? Reset everything, wipe everything to the way it was before—

Or at least close enough to the way it was before.

And this way, he wouldn’t have to remember anything anymore.)

Frisk’s expression doesn’t change, but their hand goes into the bag on their back, and his heart leaps as he sees the gleam of metal (an end would be a relief to at last be done with all these memories and this interminable existence)

But instead, Frisk holds out a small trowel and a small pot instead of a knife.

“What—? You can’t seriously—you know that I’m still—me? Nothing has changed,” he points out, flashing one of his Chara impression faces for emphasis. 

Frisk simply raises an eyebrow and gestures around them at the empty, empty ruins. 

“Of course I don’t want to stay here, but that isn’t the point—if you think I’m Asriel, think again. Asriel is gone.”

(A wisp of a memory, and nothing more)

“Everyone deserves a second chance,” Frisk says simply, still holding out the small trowel.

“No they don’t,” he snaps, “Besides I’ve had a lot of chances.”

“Not with me though,” Frisk says, “Not up in the light.”

“You think that will change anything?” he demands.

Frisk shrugs and leans down.

“I can still kill you guys you know,” he warns Frisk as they begin digging around his roots. 

Frisk nods, carefully placing some soil in the small pot. 

“And you don’t care?”

“Humans gave monsters a chance after the barrier fell; we can give you one as well,” Frisk says simply, cupping their hands around his roots and transferring him to the pot.

“This will not end well,” he grumbles, moving around in the pot (it feels—not bad but strange. Confined)

“Sans thinks that too, but we will see,” Frisk says cheerfully, tying the pot securely to their back before tugging on the rope, and then the two of them are rising into the air and out of the hole. 

He has never felt the warmth of the sun on his face before, or the breeze the drifts across his petals. It is strange, stranger than the pot limiting his roots, but maybe this is what freedom tastes like. 

And as Frisk’s friends gather around them to chatter inanely away, he thinks—

Maybe there’s a chance that Frisk is right. 

Maybe there is hope after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> So I went back and forth on Frisk actually talking, but Frisk does have a phone, so presumably they can talk? Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
